Klauser wrote:While there were some individual episodes that were better, I have to agree with E1 that it was the best story arc done in Trek.

The Dominion War arc did tend to wander some, and there was the occasional filler episode that "forgot" the war was going on. But all-in-all ... good stuff.

Of course, there really hasn't been that many other story arcs in Trek. TOS and TNG were largely episodic with the occasional two-parter thrown in. Voyager had the Year of Hell mini-arc (there may be others - I missed alot of Voyager). And of course the Xindi arc (spits on floor) from Enterprise.

One thing I never fully understood - DS9 fans seem sharply divided on the Dominion War arc. One camp appears to treats it like it was a a betrayal of DS9's original concept - and that adding Worf to the cast somehow made it worse. The other camp (me included) thought it made for some great television - and some of the best Trek made.

Those years were a great time to be a sci-fi fan. You had some great Trek being aired ... and Babylon 5 to boot!!

IMOP the Dominion War (and bringing Worf on board) was done because the show was getting it's @$$ handed to itself by Babylon 5. They needed to do something drastic and they took a few pages out of B5's book. They also hired away their special effects team.

At the time, here was no better sci-fi show around that B5. They never had the budget that Trek programming had, and the acting could be pretty bad too (anyone remember the 1st captain). What they had though was a totally engrossing story arc that spanned 4 seasons of their 5 seasons and great characters. Especially Londo and G'Kar.

I thought it was as good as it could be, given the knots they tied themselves into the last couple of seasons.

As good as it could get yes. But still they ruined the show, starting in Season 3 and it just never recovered. Last 2 episodes, Part 1 was real waste, all the time spent on flashbacks, and all, sorry you do Charactor development in the begining, not at the end.

Granted if they had more episodes like the last hr or so of part 2, I would want the show to go on, part 2 was just FRACKEN GREAT. Part 1 though, reminded me WHY I don't mind it coming to an end. I still want to know if the Cylon's used a Shadow(Bab 5) ship at the end, why didn't Galactica look more like a Vorlon ship.

I am actually gald its over, so they can't screw it up any more. Out of all the Cylons, I actually prefered Col Tigh's Cylon persona over his Colonial persona.

Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference.
The US Marines don't have that problem.
President Ronald Reagan

A major fire-fight in the accretion disk of a sigularity?!?! It'd be like trying to dogfight in a blender ... in a microwave. If the debris didn't kill you the radiation would.

Starbuck ... evaporates?!?!

Making the remnants of the Colonials our distant ancestors. Okay, I can buy into that. However, in my opinion the execution of that concept was horrid. Let's see if I got this right.

-- Admiral Adama lets the remaining Cylons go because "they've earned the right to go their own way. Okay - so far. Sets us up for the whole "this has happened before and will happen again.

-- Then, as the new president starts to make plans for a city for the remaining colonials, Lee Adama gets a wild hair and says maybe they should just junk civilization altogether. To "break the cycle"?? Huh?!? The Cylons are still out there!

-- AND THE REST OF THE COLONIALS BUY INTO IT ?!?!? Long lines of colonials walking (walking!!) towards different distant horizons?!? Earth at this time was a wilderness in the truest sense of the word, and they'd be frakkin' lucky not to loose most of their numbers in the first month.

My point is that there were a whole lot of ways they could have handled the ending with the same effect - the simplest one that comes to mind is that the colonials were left on their last legs when they find Earth and have no choice but to blend in with the natives. But to voluntarity chuck it all away??? Nope. That last half hour really ruined it for me.

Bottom line - It's OVER! Sorta like dumping your psychotic nymphomaniac girlfreind. While you miss the occasional action, you're glad all the dam drama is finished!

Man I just watched the last episode. It was great. Season 4 was pretty good as a whole, whereas Season 3 suffered a bit because of the episodic sorta content. But yeah, I ended the last show of the series and I didn't feel cheated or bored or anything, just thought it was good.

I didn't mind the flashbacks either. Reminds everyone that this is about characters, not just pretty explosions. I'm sorry but 2 hours of military planning mumbo jumbo + a fight woulda sucked pretty hard.

If people want an example of how to NOT end a series, look at Babylon 5. They thought they'd get canned at the end of season 4 so they CRAMMMED so much stuff into season 4, and then they got season 5 after all and it SUCKED SO HARD because they had no story left and they focused a bunch of retard telepaths and they just stretched it out so long. At least BSG got to end the series on their own terms.

Akalabeth wrote:If people want an example of how to NOT end a series, look at Babylon 5. They thought they'd get canned at the end of season 4 so they CRAMMMED so much stuff into season 4, and then they got season 5 after all and it SUCKED SO HARD because they had no story left and they focused a bunch of retard telepaths and they just stretched it out so long. At least BSG got to end the series on their own terms.

Glad you liked the BSG finale - it just didn't do much for me. Different strokes.

I gotta rise to B5's defense here. You make a fair point about how B5 had to rush the end of season 4 - then expand the beginning of season 5. And yes the "flow" of the series suffered for it. I also got tired of the Byron messiah crap for a while, however as a friend recently reminded me, season 5's schedule was way out of wack so many of the early season 5 episodes were aired several times before the final episodes were produced and aired.

Comparing the B5 and BSG series finales - I still have to give it to B5. If you're paying attention to what's going on in B5, everything that happens to the main characters make sense when they tie it up. I may not have liked a few of the characters ends (Lanier for example), but it made sense. What happened at the end of BSG seems like they threw stuff up against a wall to figure out if it made sense.

Laura Roslyn's fate made sense. But Admiral Adama and the Chief?? Please. Baltar and Caprica?? And their "angel" counterparts?? What's up with that. The Colonials voluntarily shucking civilization on Lee Adama's whim?? Sorry, I don't buy it. And don't even get me started on Starbucks fate.

But all-in-all, IMO they could have done so much better than what they did. BSG had alot of real solid story and action - but just as much or more hand-wringing and useless drama. Just like the finale.

If the Series would have ended with just the 2nd part, it would have been better, but if you watched Part 1 and Part 2, together, they just showed what was both right and wrong with the series.

5th season of B5, tied up a lot of lose ends. I could Careless for Byron and Fester, granted it involved Lyta so it wasn't to bad, but Telepaths were a big part of the war, a back theme the entire series, so they worked on that loss end. The rest of the loss ends, G'Kar, Londo, Garibaldi, Vir, Sheridan and Delenn, even Franklin's charactor line was cleaned up some. You got to see more of some of the other Races, Drazi comes to mind.
Biggest problem was the build up for Crusade, towards the end, with those Moron's from TBS trying to run things, and the Guys at Sci-Fi not ready to take charge.
The launch for Crusade was good, but it quicly fell apart and left a bad taste in a lot peoples mouth. Lucky it was the end, and not the season 2/3 mess that BSG took on. Part one of the Finale reminded everybody of everything that was wrong, part 2 of the finale showed everything they could have done right.

Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference.
The US Marines don't have that problem.
President Ronald Reagan

What really messed up the last season of B5 was syndication of their show (Primtime Entertainment Networks).

They really thought the show was going get canceled at the end of the 4th season, and then at the last minute TNT picked it up.

However what a lot of people don't know is that the last 4 episodes of the show were shot at the end of season 4 (that's why Ivanova was back in those Eps.), to close out the series in case it wasn't picked up for season 5.

When it was, they had to hodgepodge the season together and throw the telepath war and the civil war together and solve it as fast as possible. JMS has said it would have played out longer and been more integrated into season 4 had he known otherwise.

Klauser wrote:
I gotta rise to B5's defense here. You make a fair point about how B5 had to rush the end of season 4 - then expand the beginning of season 5. And yes the "flow" of the series suffered for it. I also got tired of the Byron messiah crap for a while, however as a friend recently reminded me, season 5's schedule was way out of wack so many of the early season 5 episodes were aired several times before the final episodes were produced and aired.

Yeah the end of season 5 was actually the end of season 4. "Sleeping in the Light" I believe it was called, where they end the station and Ivanova gets a Warlock command and Sheridan goes off on his pony ride or whatever. Yeah that was a good end, but it wasn't really season 5. I don't remember barely anything from season 5, probably because I've only watched it once. And Lyta? Bleah. I don't know why all the guys got the hots for that chick. She was always one of the least desirable women on the show, I'd a preferred the blonde telepath to her. Not that there's anything wrong with Lyta, but there's nothing particular great either.

Laura Roslyn's fate made sense. But Admiral Adama and the Chief?? Please. Baltar and Caprica?? And their "angel" counterparts?? What's up with that. The Colonials voluntarily shucking civilization on Lee Adama's whim?? Sorry, I don't buy it. And don't even get me started on Starbucks fate.

Well. Baltar finally grew a pair. Did something selfless for once in his life. Put himself on the line instead of running. I think Caprica and Baltar should've had a little more contact before that, they didn't build up their reunion enough. But I'd buy that. As for Galen??

Think about it. He hooks up with Tori 2000 years ago, Tori kills his wife of the present day (Kali), Kali killed his first love (Boomer), Boomer did ALL KINDS of bad shit though redeemed herself in the end. I mean, a guy with that sort of streak with love? I think he's just done with women. Wants to go off and die by himself. He loved boomer, he loved Kali at one point and way back when he loved Tori but they're all dead. So what's he going to do? Grab a new woman somewhere? I think they're just making it clear he wants to die alone sorta thing.

As for the colonies thing. I dunno. New Caprica was a hole. I wouldn't want to live in another place like that. And really what technology do they have? They basically just have a bunch of ships with them, I don't think any of those ships are construction ships. It's not like they have pavers and constructions materials or whatnot. It's just like ditching your car after a really really long drive. It's a bit of a stretch, but, if you're living in a ship for 3 years breathing bad air and eating crap rations and someone asks you to leave it all behind in exchange for a new chance on some beautiful planet, I'd see a lot of people saying yes.

As for the other cylons. I dunno Cabal is dead. Presumably there's a few baseships lying around. But, how would they find them? Those cylons are just going to die off because they dont have resurrection tech. The only reason they had new caprica is because someone set off a nuke.

Speak of resurrection. The problem Cabal has isn't that they lost resurrection, it's that they pissed off all the women. They put deanna in a box, and the sixes and eights were against them. You want to keep the species going? Don't have only guy friends hahahaha.

Akalabeth wrote:As for the colonies thing. I dunno. New Caprica was a hole. I wouldn't want to live in another place like that. And really what technology do they have? They basically just have a bunch of ships with them, I don't think any of those ships are construction ships. It's not like they have pavers and constructions materials or whatnot. It's just like ditching your car after a really really long drive. It's a bit of a stretch, but, if you're living in a ship for 3 years breathing bad air and eating crap rations and someone asks you to leave it all behind in exchange for a new chance on some beautiful planet, I'd see a lot of people saying yes.

I'm with you right up until the end there. Yes, they have a chance to start over on a beautiful new planet. They had, like 37 or 38 thousand people by the time they found Earth. That many people can dig in and start growing crops and domesticating animals and rebuilding a civiilization in short order. Or use the Raptors to ferry folks around and start several new cities to ensure survivability. But to expect the audience would accept the fact that the colonists would freely chuck it all and go prancing naked in the wilderness - to "break the cycle" as Lee Adama put it - just doesn't make sense to me. Most of the colonists would be dead before the first year was over.

And that's where the ending lost me. Any half-competant writer could have come up with a way to have the Galactica and the remnants of the fleet find Earth at the end and have it be a do-or-die option to settle the few surviving colonists on Earth and blend in with the natives as a matter of survival. But to voluntartily give up the benefits of civilization and technology on a whim - knowing it will kill a large percentage of your remaining population? Sorry, I just don't buy it - and that's one of the reasons the series finale lost me.

I didn't get the impression that it was every man for themselves. The main cast certain seemed to go that route, but other civilians were seen marching in line together (ie right before the end there were like 50 people walking together in two different groups, and the president/lawyer guy was counting themoff). I got the impression rather than a city, they split people up to create small tribes of people. Who could choose to work together to form little villages and whatever. So I could see a lot of those groups making little farms, and what not. The humans at the time seemed to be hunter gatherers, but maybe contact with the colonies leads some of them to farming as well.

So yeah. Not every man for themselves, but every group of men for themselves. Create little tribes and villages instead of one city, and some of them will endure. Even Tigh and Elenne seemed to be walking generally with one of those groups. Though, most of the main cast seemed to go their own way. Apollo to explore, Adama to live out their dream alone, Galen to avoid women at all costs hahaha, etcetera.